Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies and Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry, Stanford University and director of the Folding@home project discuss using the power of NVIDIA GeForce® graphics processing units (GPU) and NVIDIA® CUDA™ C-programming technology to significantly improve the performance of non-graphics applications by transferring the workload from the CPU to the more efficient GPU.

Folding@home makes use of idle computer cycles to perform scientific calculations that are used to study protein folding in an effort to help find a cure for diseases, and runs up to 140 times faster on an NVIDIA GPU than on a CPU.

Elemental Technologies’ Badaboom is a video transcoding program that converts video files into other formats. The conversion process can be up to 18 times faster when done on a GeForce GPU, getting the job done in a few minutes instead of a few hours.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CLARA, CA—August 12, 2008—Consumers want blazing fast performance—whether blasting their way through the latest game or being socially responsible and sharing their PC’s processing power to help find cures for diseases. Today, NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies, just made this easier by releasing a set of non-graphics applications that utilize the power of its GeForce® graphics cards. Included in the GeForce Power Pack are Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed-computing, protein-folding client and a trial version of Elemental Technologies’ Badaboom video transcoder. Available for download today at no-cost at www.nvidia.com/theforcewithin, these are part of a growing number of applications that use the power of NVIDIA GeForce® graphics processing units (GPU) and NVIDIA® CUDA™ C-programming technology to significantly improve the performance of non-graphics applications by transferring the workload from the CPU to the more efficient GPU.

All of the 80 million plus GeForce 8 Series and higher GPUs in the field are CUDA-enabled, the largest installed base of general-purpose, parallel-computing processors ever created. The same GPU architecture that delivers stunning onscreen computer graphics in video games is also ideal for many other types of applications. The latest generation of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs offer up to 240 processor cores, compared to a maximum of the four cores found on the highest-end CPU. Any process that can be divided into multiple elements and run in parallel can be programmed to take advantage of the massive processing potential of the GPU.

NVIDIA first released its CUDA programming technology in 2007, providing software developers a programming environment based on the industry-standard C language for easy creation of applications running on NVIDIA GPUs. Numerous commercial and scientific applications have adopted CUDA technology and now consumer applications are starting to emerge that take advantage of the technology.

"Elemental's software, if it truly performs the way we've seen here, has the potential to be a disruptive force in both the GPU and CPU industries. On the GPU side it would give NVIDIA hardware a significant advantage..." says Anand Shimpi, CEO and editor-in-chief of AnandTech.com. "Video encoding has historically been an area where Intel CPUs have done very well, but if the fastest video encoder ends up being a NVIDIA GPU - it could mean that video encoding performance would be microprocessor agnostic, you'd just need a good NVIDIA GPU."

Elemental Technologies’ Badaboom is a video transcoding program that converts video files into other formats. For example, the program can convert an MPEG file to play on an iPod or other portable device. Video transcoding can be one of the most time-consuming tasks in home computing. Converting a two-hour movie, for instance, can take six or more hours when using the computer’s CPU. However, with Badaboom on the GPU, the conversion process can be up to 18 times faster than traditional methods, getting the job done in a few minutes and, in the meantime, also freeing the CPU to handle other tasks like email and Web browsing.

Tackling the intense processing demands of ongoing medical research, Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed computing program, gives consumers the opportunity to share their computer processing power in an effort to help find a cure for disease. Running up to 140 times faster on an NVIDIA GPU over a CPU, Folding@home makes use of idle computer cycles to perform scientific calculations. Folding@home studies protein folding, where proteins in our bodies assemble themselves. Biologists simulate protein folding in order to understand how proteins fold so quickly and reliably, and to discover what happens if they do not fold correctly. Diseases such as Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), an inherited form of emphysema, and many cancers are believed to result from protein misfolding. The Folding@home client is a free program that runs in the background of the PC, allowing ordinary people to have a real impact in the search for a cure of these diseases.

The Quadro Plex D Series VCS will be available in September 2008 with prices beginning at $10,750.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce graphics products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro® graphics products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla™ computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. NVIDIA's inaugural NVISION 08 conference will be held August 25-27, 2008 in San Jose, California. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com and www.nvision08.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits, features, capabilities and uses of the CUDA Consumer Application Pack #1, CUDA technology and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs; non-gaming applications utilizing the GPU instead of the CPU; applications based on CUDA technology and the Folding@home computing program are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: delays in ramping new products into production; our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble and test our products; design, manufacturing or software defects; adoption of the CPU instead of the GPU for non-graphical computational tasks; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; development of faster or more efficient GPU or CPU technology; the impact of technological development and competition; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended April 27, 2008. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.